Merchants fuming over PayPal glitch

28 May 2008 | 54385 views | 0

Glitches with the PayPal service has left merchants unable to accept some international payments for almost two weeks. The bug has also prevented merchants from charging some customers for handling costs.

Furious merchants have hit online message boards to complain about the glitch, which has prevented customers from using PayPal's "handling_cart" feature - which adds charges for handling and shipping - since 15 May.

Since then the subscription payments page has also stopped letting customers choose their country via the dropdown menu when entering credit card information during checkout. This means new users are unable to make international payments.

Merchants have attacked PayPal's slow response to the problem and failure to keep people informed.

PayPal finally posted a statement on its developer community site yesterday which says: "The fix for these issues has been identified. We're now in the process of scheduling these fixes to be rolled out to the live site."

But the eBay subsidiary has failed to indicate when the issue will be fixed.

In a posting on the developer community discussion board, one furious merchant accused PayPal of having a "cavalier attitude to their clients' businesses" and called the situation "utterly deplorable".

Meanwhile, in Australia eBay has filed a response to submissions to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on its plans to force customers in the country to use PayPal to make payments on the online auction site.

EBay has applied to the ACCC for an exemption from the Trade Practices Act as it prepares to stop vendors using other payments methods, such as direct bank deposits, cheques and money orders, on its online auction site. An option of paying on delivery will still be offered under the plans.

The firm's submissions says: "Any detriment to the public that may be caused by a lessening of competition as a result of the implementation of the project would be clearly outweighed by the significant public benefits that would be likely to result from it."

The ACCC says it expects to publish its view on the matter before 17 June, when eBay plans to introduce the measure.

In better news for the company, PayPal says it will move its Dublin operations centre, which houses European customer service, operations and fraud prevention functions, to a bigger facility later this year.

The company will move the centre - which has been in use since 2003 and currently houses around 900 staff - to a site at the Ballycoolin Business Park in Blanchardstown which holds around 1250 desks.